ethnonationalism and language

Language and Nationalism, Part 2: State and Language in Europe’s Romance Zone

Article-Grid, Cultural Geography, Geopolitics, Linguistic Geography, Myth of the Nation-State, Seduced by the Map / By

The connection between language development and state consolidation is clearly evident in Western Europe, usually regarded as the birthplace of the nation-state. Such linkages undermine the ethnonationalist assertion that nations are natural reflection of language-defined communities. We will examine this phenomenon in several posts, beginning today with the Romance zone, composed of countries whose official and national languages derived from Latin. We begin with France, which is often viewed as the quintessential nation-state.

French, as spoken today, was not the language of the early medieval kingdom that evolved into modern France. Latin was used by both the church and state, while the precursor of French was the dialect of the Paris Basin, originally regarded as merely the local spoken form of Latin (or “Romance,” the language of Rome). That dialect would eventually be standardized and politicized by the evolving state, spreading widely both by both imposition and emulation. But south of the Loire River, dialects generally grouped together as Occitan long maintained their grip; in Brittany and the Basque region, non-Romance tongues continued to hold sway. In the romantic age of the nineteenth century, language was politicized in France, as it was elsewhere in Europe, for nation-building purposes.[i] But it was not until the late 19th century, or even WWI, that standard French gained dominance across the country. Service in the military was crucial to this development. In the memorable words of historian Eugen Weber, this was part of a broader process of turning “peasants into Frenchmen.”[ii] That process is by no means fully complete today, especially in the increasingly independence-minded island of Corsica, where the local language is more closely related to Italian than to French.

 

 

 

National consolidation worked out differently in the other Romance-speaking countries. Spain, also regarded as one of the world’s first nation-states, first appears on historical maps in 1469, with the marriage of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. But but it long functioned as a composite monarchy, joining together diverse groups of peoples, places, and polities under one crown.[iii] Efforts to forge a closer union prompted resistance, starting with a failed Catalan revolt (the Reaper’s War) in 1640 and intensifying under the Bourbon dynasty (beginning in 1700). At that time, the Castilian dialect (castellano) began to be referred to as Spanish (español), reflecting the increasing dominance of Castile within the state. Both terms, however, are used to this day, with Article III of the Spanish constitution stipulating that “El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado.” (Intriguingly, in some Latin American countries the language is called “Castilian” and in others “Spanish.”) In Spain, many Catalans take umbrage at the political pretension that they see as inherent in the term “Spanish.”

 

 

 

 

As was true elsewhere in Europe, linguistic standardization in Spain proceeded slowly as local Romance languages like Leonese and Aragonese declined in favor of Castilian. Today, only a few tens of thousands of people speak either of these once-important tongues. Resistance to Castilian was more pronounced in the Basque country, noted for its non-Indo-European language (Euskara, or Basque), and in Catalonia, where the local tongue (Catalan) is arguably a variant of Occitan. Dictator Francisco Franco (r. 1936-1975) tried to force linguistic unity across the country, compelling a Spanish identity on the Basques and Catalans and prohibiting their languages in the public sphere. This policy resoundingly backfired, prompting both groups to intensify their own national projects. Across the border in France, by contrast, more lenient policies and more attractive inducements to nationalism have rendered Basque and Catalan separatism largely moot.[iv]

 

 

 

 

 

Faced with the incomplete success of their nation-building efforts, Spanish officials have tried to maintain the integrity of their nation-state by making allowances to linguistic minorities and provincial populations. After Franco’s death, the new Spanish constitution (1978) granted limited self-rule to all the country’s main political divisions, which were henceforth deemed “autonomous communities.” The Basques and Catalans are further allowed to claim the status of “nationalities” (nacionalidades). They cannot, however, officially define themselves as nations (naciones), as that would supposedly compromise the unity of Spain.[v] Such concessions have not fully succeeded in bringing either group into the larger national fold. Intriguingly, the Basque national project appears to have weakened itself by embracing violence, whereas that of the Catalans has been better maintained through its peaceful but persistent resistance. But Catalan nationalism faces potent challenges. It is viewed with suspicion by most inhabitants of Barcelona (many of whom have non-Catalan backgrounds) and infuriates many residents of Valencia and the Balearic Islands, people who speak Catalan dialects but spurn Catalan identity.[vi] “Catalanophobia” has become widespread in Valencia, where, ironically, calls to boycott Catalan products are issued in the Catalan language.

 

 

Galicia, in northwestern Spain, defies these generalizations. Its language is more closely related to Portuguese than Spanish; whether Galician is a separate language or a dialect of Portuguese is a matter of much debate. Like Catalan in Catalonia but unlike Aragonese in Aragon, Galician is still the majority language of the region. And like both the Basque Country and Catalonia, Galicia is officially granted the status of “historical nationality.” But while Galician regionalism is a potent political force, Galician nationalism has never gained widespread support (although nationalist candidates did receive 19 percent of the vote in elections in 2005). Desire for union with Portugal, on the other hand, is rare. A few Portuguese nationalists in Portugal, however, do dream of a Greater Portugal, or “Portugalicia.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Italy, which did not become a state until the 1870s, linguistic consolidation was delayed and remains far from complete today. Owing in part to Italy’s belated state formation, its national language derives not from the dialect of its capital, but rather from that of culturally prestigious Florence, whose Tuscan dialect was popularized through the works of Dante. Many Italian dialects are not mutually intelligible and are thus classified by linguists as separate languages. The “Gallo-Italic” dialects of the north are more closely related to Occitan than to standard Italian, while the Friulian language of the northeast groups with the Romansh language of southeastern Switzerland. The Sardinian language is even more distinctive, having emerged from Latin before the linguistic divergence that gave rise to the other Romance languages. In addition, several non-Romance languages are scattered across parts of the Italian peninsula, including dialects of Greek and Albanian.

 

 

 

The Italian government has granted official recognition to a score of regional languages and dialects, most of which are spoken in the north. The country’s most widely used local languages, however, are denied such status, regarded instead as mere dialects of Italian. Many of these “dialects” retain spoken vitality. The Piedmontese language of the northwest, for example, is still used by some two million people, about half of the population of Piedmont. The ability to read and write in Piedmontese, however, has almost vanished. Although the government of Piedmont gave the language official regional status in 2004, it is seldom taught in schools, upsetting local language activists.

 

 

 

 

 

In general, the regional dialects/languages of Italy have experienced little politicization, and thus pose no threat to the nation-state. Whatever their mother tongue, almost all young and middle-aged Italians are fluent in the national language and use it on a daily basis. Although secession movements have considerable support in the north, economic grievances outweigh those of language. But if northern Italy (“Padania”), or some portion of it, ever were to separate from the rest of the country, it would be interesting to see what language policies governments would be enacted.

 

 

 

 

 

The main exception to these generalizations about language and national identity in Italy is South Tyrol, or Alto Adige, located in the far north. This mostly German-speaking region was annexed by Italy after World War I, in violation of the ethnonational self-determination principles championed by the U.S. delegation at Paris Peace Conference. Ignoring linguistic geography, Italy demanded and received a border at the crest of the Alps. This maneuver quickly spurred a Tyrolian independence movement, which engaged in occasional acts of violence though the 1960s. Although Italy has granted the region limited autonomy, support for secession remains widespread. Polling shows that more than half of the region’s German speakers would prefer to secede. Intriguingly, quite a few of its Italian speakers agree. South Tyrol is Italy’s most prosperous region, and many of its people, regardless of their native language, think that membership in the country comes at too large of an economic cost.

 

 

Europe’s other national Romance languages, Portuguese and Romanian, have fewer political complications. The dialects of Portuguese are all easily interintelligible; the main issue here is status of Galician in northwestern Spain, discussed above. Romanian also has relatively little dialectal diversity, with all its dialects being mutually interintelligible. This is a rather curious feature, given Romania’s relatively large size and complex history of political division and rule by other states. (The “Vlach” languages that are scattered over the southern Balkans outside of Romania, however, are sometimes classified as highly distinctive Romanian dialects.) Within Romania, the main issue of linguistic politics concerns the speakers of unrelated languages, particularly Hungarian.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Romanian, however, is not just the national language of Romania, as it has the same status in neighboring Moldova, a former Soviet Republic. Under Soviet rule, Moldovan was classified as a separate language on political grounds, but its differences from standard Romanian are minor. Although one does find a “Moldavian” dialect in Moldova, this form of the language is also spoken across northeastern Romania (and in a few pockets of Ukraine). Given this linguistic environment, it is not surprising that that many Romanians and Moldovans advocate unification on ethnonational grounds. Economic and political complications, however, limit its appeal. According to early 2022 polling, “only 11% of Romania’s population supports an immediate union, while over 42% think it is not the moment.” In Moldova, support for unification is also a minority position, but it rose markedly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Polls asking the question “if a referendum took place next Sunday regarding the unification of the Republic of Moldova and Romania, would you vote for or against the unification?” showed an increase in agreement from approximately 20% in 2015 to 44% in 2022.

The relationships between language, politics, and geography are highly complicated across the Romance zone of Europe, challenging any facile stories of natural language-based ethnonational solidarity. The same situation is true in the Germanic language zone, as we shall see in the next post.

[i] According to Kedourie (1960, 60), “It was literary men, with literary preoccupations, who … enowed language with political significance.”

[ii] Weber 1976

[iii] Henry Kamen, Empire; How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763. Harper Perennial, 2004

[iv] Thomas D. Lancaster, “Comparative Nationalisms: The Basques of Spain and France,” European Journal of Political Research, 1987, 15: 561-590.

[v] “A Nationality, Not a Nation,” The Economist, July 1, 2010. http://www.economist.com/node/16490065

[vi] Martin W. Lewis, “Valencia and the Països Catalans Controversy,” GeoCurrents, Oct. 13, 2015. http://www.geocurrents.info/cultural-geography/linguistic-geography/valencia-and-the-paisos-catalans-controversy

 

Language and National Identity, Part 1

Article-Grid, Cultural Geography, Linguistic Geography, Seduced by the Map / By

(Author’s Note: This is a preliminary draft of a chapter that might be included in a forthcoming book, tentatively entitled Seduced by the Map: How the Nation-State Model Prevents Us from Thinking Clearly About the World. It includes some bibliographical citations, but they are woefully incomplete.)  

There are good reasons why students of nationalism often emphasize language.[1] Building a community, even an imaginary one, requires communication. For ethnonationalists, language has even greater significance, as it is seen as a key indicator of the deeply rooted relatedness that supposedly generates strong and stable nations. Up to the mid-1900s, scholars often used language as a proxy for genetic bonds; many maps of “race” made at the time actually depicted languages or language families. In the ethnonationalist discourse of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Europe, people who speak a single language that originated in the territory that they inhabit were often viewed as forming a cohesive ethnic group that, if large enough, deserves to have its own state.

Such ideas are no longer easily supported. It is now obvious that languages can spread independently of genes, but it is less commonly realized that they have done so for millennia. The ethnolinguistic communities that supposedly form the age-old bedrock of national solidarity are not as clearly separated from each other as they have been imagined to be, and in many cases their emergence has been relatively recent. As we shall see, the national languages that underpin contemporary ethnonational states were in almost all cases politically molded or even created to enhance state cohesion and national solidarity. They were not, in other words, natural features of preexisting populations.

In countries founded on extensive immigration from distant lands, traditional ethnonationalism is not applicable. The American, Australian, and Brazilian nations, for example, cannot be depicted as rooted in local ancestral populations united by cultural and genetic ties. But that does not mean that language plays no role in their national imaginations, nor does it make them immune from ethnonationalism. But the neoethnonationalism found in some extremist quarters in the United States and other immigration-based countries necessarily rests on different foundations from the older creed. It generally turns to race as the key indicator of relatedness while framing language and religion as cultural adhesives necessary for national bonding.

As a result of this disparity, the racism inherent in the “white ethnonationalist” fringe in United States and a few other immigration-based countries differs markedly from the racism that generally accompanied traditional European ethnonationalism. The notion that the Germans and the Poles, or the English and the Irish, could find political solidarity in their common “Caucasian” racial identity would have struck most nineteenth-century observers as absurd. In the era’s popular wisdom, each linguistically defined national community formed its own race. Scholars of the time, in contrast, distinguished broader races ostensibly based on such physical attributes as head shape and skin color but often linked for convenience to language groups. Until the post-WWII era, however, the emphasis was on dividing Europeans by race, not uniting them. This situation changed, however, in the late twentieth-century as diverse immigration streams began to transform European demography.

To understand the linkage between language and nationalism it is therefore necessary to differentiate countries that have potential grounds for traditional language-based ethnonationalism from those do not. States in the first category have clear majority populations that speak a single language that originated (or is perceived as having originated) within its national territory. As can be seen in the map posted here, such countries are clustered in Europe, East Asia, Mainland Southeast Asia, and Central Asia. But as we shall see, many complications intrude on this simple binary classification. This map shows one such problem: situations in which more than one state can lay claim to the same ethnolinguistic legacy.

The present chapter takes on countries linked to a particular locally rooted ethnolinguistic group. As we shall see, the correspondence between state and language does not reflect ancient conditions but is instead a feature that has been politically engineered over the past several centuries. The more complicated situations faced by countries that have no indigenous ethnolinguistic core group are taken up in the following chapter. Both discussions explore how language has been used to invoke the imagined communities that lie at the heart of the nation-state project. As we shall see, the relations between nation and language can be intricate indeed.

Before delving into specific cases, it is worth noting that most Americas are probably perplexed by the subtleties and importance of language politics in the rest of the world. Distinctions that matter passionately elsewhere may seem arcane or even moot from the standpoint of the speakers of the planet’s key international language. It takes time and patience to drill down into these emotionally charged histories and geographies to appreciate their continuing significance.

            The Deep Historical Development of National Languages

Language is usually imagined as the most important factor in separating “them” from “us” in early human societies, delimiting discrete social groups that conceptualized themselves as a single people denoted by their own ethnonym. The noted linguist Mark Baker has suggested that this differentiating facility is one of the main reasons why languages diverge from each other as quickly as they historically have.[2] But such separation by language is only one side of the coin. Many individuals have always learned the tongues of neighboring peoples, while trade languages have long enabled communication across ethnolinguistic lines. Some evidence suggests that such practices were widespread before the development of agriculture. In some contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, particularly those of Australia, some individuals cross multiple language lines while wandering over vast distances, generally finding themselves accepted into tiny but often multilingual bands.[3] Somewhat similar dynamics may have been at play in the Paleolithic Age over most of the world.

 

 

As sedentary social organization emerged and spread, languages probably tended to become more firmly fixed in place. Before the advent of the state and other institutions of broad social integration, local languages tended to be restricted to small territories and were spoken by groups seldom numbering beyond the tens of thousands. To be sure, some languages expanded relatively quickly over vast areas through the demographic expansion and social domination of the peoples who used them. Such a process was usually propelled by some technological advantage, such as the crops and iron tools and weapons of the Bantus in Africa, the seagoing boats and navigational techniques of the Austronesians in the Pacific and Indian oceans,[4] and the horses of the early Indo-Europeans in Eurasia. But the expanding languages of such linguistic “spread zones” were simultaneously differentiating into different dialects and then into separate languages, undermining any linguistic unity that the initial process seemed to promise. To sustain a single, standardized language over an area the size of most modern countries requires integrative mechanisms, which have usually relied on governmental power. In a word, most ethnonational states substantially built the languages that supposedly serve as their primordial glue.

 

 

 

 

 

This drive for political-linguistic coherence is relatively new. Not all states have historically sought to disseminate the language of their ruling elites. Pre-modern polities, especially large ones, were often strikingly multilingual. Elites and commoners, moreover, often spoke different languages. A clear example from the early modern period is the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a vast and powerful polity whose leaders never sought to govern through their own tongue; even in their capital city of Vilnius/Vil’nya, “the dominant administrative language was Slavonic ruski, not Baltic Lithuanian.”[5] Many early states employed multiple languages of administration, often including “extinct” classical tongues of high prestige. Latin was the official language of multi-lingual Hungary until 1844. The earliest known polities of Southeast Asia apparently employed Sanskrit rather than their own tongues. Later, other languages gained prominent roles. The Burmese kingdom/empire of Pagan (849-1297), for example, seems to have used Burmese, Pyu, and Mon, employing the classical Indian language Pali, as well as Sanskrit, for religious purposes. Similar examples are legion in the ancient Near East, as recounted in Nicholas Ostler’s insightful Empires of the Word.[6] The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550-330 BCE), for example, used Elamite, a little-know but once important language, and then Aramaic as its main administrative language, downplaying the Old Persian of its ruling elite.[7] (In the empire’s grand stone inscriptions, the texts are written in Elamite, Akkadian, and Old Persian.) Ostler concludes that “the life and death of languages are in principle detached from the political fortunes of their associated states.”[8]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To be sure, some ancient empires did spread the language of their ruling class widely, generating something like a national tongue in the process. Latin was originally a minor language limited to a small area in west-central Italy, but by the fourth century CE it was spoken over most of the western half of the Roman Empire.[9] Similarly, Arabic was originally restricted to the central Arabian Peninsula, but after the conquests of the Umayyad Caliphate in the early seventh century it spread over much of Southwest Asia and most of North Africa. In South America, Quechua was similarly disseminated far beyond its small homeland in the southern highlands of Peru by the Inca Empire, a process that continued under Spanish authority well into the eighteenth century.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite these precedents, a close fit of state with language is generally a feature of the modern world. To be sure, state-level centralization coupled with linguistic consolidation has proceeded in a fitful manner, but it eventually yielded scores of countries that are closely associated with their own language. This pattern mainly characterizes the Eurasian rimlands of Europe, East Asia, and mainland Southeast Asia. Let us now look at each of these regions in turn.

[1] Elie Kedourie, Nationalism. 1960. London: Hutchison and Co. Page 68.

[2] Mark Baker, The Atoms of Language: The Mind’s Hidden Rules of Grammar. 2002.

Basic Books.

[3] See the discussion in David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. 2021. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

[4] In many parts of their expansion zone, including Madagascar and Polynesia, the early Austronesians were the first people to settle the lands.

[5] Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe. 2011. Allen Lane. Page 261. Ruski refers here not so much to Russia as to the language ancestral to modern Belarusian.

[6] Nicholas Ostler, Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. 2005. Harper Perennial.

[7] Ostler, pages 47, 57

[8] Ostler, page 63

[9] Local languages, however, persisted in odd corners, as attested by the survival of Welsh and Basque, while the eastern half of the empire mostly used Greek and Aramaic/Syriac. The spread of Latin is attributed not merely to its administrative functions, but also to the emulation of local elites and the widespread experience of service in the Roman army. Its final fillip may have been the spread of Christianity, which reached deeper into everyday life than the empire ever had.